


We Have the Human Condition

by Phase7



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Canon Compliant, Cock Expansion, Featuring the Black Ooze from Norman Reedus and the Funky Foetus!, Large Cock, M/M, Parasite Kaz, Stuffing, Xmas Supply Drop 2017, background bosselot, canon complaint, drekavac ocelot, fext big boss, oni venom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:34:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phase7/pseuds/Phase7
Summary: The rough waters and concrete nest of mother base harbour greater monsters than war criminals alone.  One night, Venom proves that he already is a demon, Kaz.  And Miller will be so happy to hear it.Fill for MGS supply drop 2017:147	monster V is in some sort of heat. Kaz, Ocelot, or the both of them have to pacify him with their bodies before he goes on a rampage :)





	We Have the Human Condition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heavvymetalqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavvymetalqueen/gifts).



The drekavac are not proud creatures. Base. Craven. Ignoble. They are born from infants unborn, young children passed into this world dead without baptism. No one would choose this life of hatred for their child if they knew what demons would do to its unshriven soul. The drekavac do not make trouble for their parents, and fear dogs, but their voice brings disease and death to those who hear it. In the cold beyond the last stone of the graveyard, they fly on the metal wings of birds and see through the jewelled eyes of cats. Their corpses grow lanky, mottled, pale, stretch-limbed, big-headed, long haired, and always screaming—

крести меня, крести меня!  
baptise me, baptise me!  
во многих водах Иисуса:  
there in the waters of Iesus:  
крести меня!  
baptise me!

For every type there is its own degenerate. A drekavac who can think itself dignified, with a tiny head, always making trouble for its parents, training dogs, and instead of turning to its salvation, it screams in hedonism— меня! меня! меняу! Me! Me! Meow! But were it not for such a singularly cursed child, the world would have had no hold to cage its greatest monster. A drekavac is both human and demon. Its worst son, who wastes his screams on whispers, knows how to speak to all souls, and how to please them.

-===-

Behind his cropped ears, Ocelot itched again. The hair never grew back thicker than peach fuzz there, like a normal human, thanks to a childhood of waxing. The doctors had left the scar from his surgery in the seam between ear and head. Still, when it itched, long ears strove to turn under the tight skin, and long hairs wanted to tassel into the air like a lynx. His senses told him that something uncanny was happening on Mother Base. Not something dangerous: that was left to hunches and common sense. Not something momentous: he did not have a sense for the beyond in any useful capacity. All his ears felt was a faint sound, a tiny orchestral tune, forever unplaceable, that rang when reality warped to the point of breaking. There was no veil between worlds, only a chorus of sounds which some could hear, and to which most were deaf. If the world of the natural and so-called unnatural were a symphony, Ocelot's broken ears heard only when the cannon fired. When the church bells tolled. When the guillotine hit the block.

Which event did the itching sound portended? Ocelot stopped scratching pen on paper and listened to the timbre. Distantly, the Mahler knelled. In the margins of his acquisitions report, Ocelot saw the spaces between words line up into a tower, which burnt, and fell. He donned his duster and rushed along the clamouring wrought iron catwalks to the last place he had left Big Boss.

-===-

Historical records place the earliest mention of the fext during the Thirty Years War. The legend grew from the constantly mutating lore of vampires and witchcraft finally wed in war-torn Czechoslovakia. The name derives from German Kugelfest: bulletproof. Yet long before there were glass bullets to finally pierce the hide of these undead generals, frightened mothers sought to dip their sons in the Styx. It takes a wicked woman to barter her son's soul for his life, but when the bargain comes through, and when Charon casts an infant iceberg from his boat's course, the waters still hold the dead body after birth.

Then, the witches say, break the baby from the amniotic sac, and replace it with only the placenta. Burn the sac and placenta until it is a black paste. Cut your baby's left armpit, and sew in the bargain's pitch. You will see the wound heal in a second, and your son come to life.

The fext will grow up handsome, strong, brave, agile, untiring, and undying. More so than ten men his lesser. He will heal from any wound, and after death he will shrivel but not decay while his bones rattle restlessly. No projectile will kill him except a bullet of glass, a bolt of string, or a button from a sling. No act will save his demonic soul except to die for an innocent. When Hades finally comes for his soul, his body will become burnt dust on the wind.

-===-

Few soldiers on the battlefield lived long enough to figure it out. Few on Mother Base cared enough about obscure Slavic folktales used to scare children, and then only one or the other. But to those who could see, it was obvious that the undying Big Boss who returned from mortal wounds after a meal was a fext, and possible that Ocelot who was absolutely known to make strange sounds could be a drekavac. Equally occult was the fact, passed in rumour, that Big Boss and Ocelot held one another closer in their bosoms than as buddies. Seeing the two in a shaded corner or the zoo platform or hearing them through the walls in supposedly abandoned halls easily dispelled the magic of ignorance.

Kaz DESPISED it. His eyes melted to think of it. Then he pressed them back in place, and refused to let them roam. There was no need to confirm that Big Boss had abandoned him every time he sensed it was happening afresh. He'd spent years under Big Boss. Every sense of the word. He hadn't abandoned the man's dream. He'd made all of this shitty salt stained steel hive a reality. He'd made money off of it, so much, and changed the world.

He'd lost his limbs for Big Boss and in the beginning it hadn't mattered. He'd been saved. He'd been looked at with love. He'd been cherished, and touched more gently than ever before in his whole goddamn life. He'd been asked how HE wanted the sex. Big Boss, his Boss, had come back for him better than ever and had made life a dream. They'd be scarred and broken TOGETHER.

So Ocelot. He'd trotted back into Mother base like a spoiled Siamese to the salmon, knocked what Kaz liked off the shelf while looking him straight in the eyes, and then rubbed his face against Snake's thigh until he owned him. Then he'd purred about some supernatural bullshit as if it weren't code for drugged-up hypnosis tricks.

And THEN he'd acted all benevolent by saying he'd let Kaz and Snake get reacquainted first before he waltzed in. SO nice of him. He'd pretended it was Snake's choice who he wanted to stay with in the end. Let Snake choose, completely unbiased. Let it be a little game of tugging at what was left of Miller's heart.

When all the fun of that faded, Ocelot just dropped the bomb on him casually. Three minutes into a stupid dialogue about the Sons of Big Boss and Memes and True Outer Heaven, like some sort of John's Boyfriend of Patmos predicting the end of the world, Kaz stated his piece and left. He didn't want to be part of that Super Secret Big Boss Dream Club Let's True Soldiers Illuminacchan Go! Kai anyway.

Venom Snake was still out there acting like Big Boss were a sweet summer child. Since he was Big Boss, and he was the sweetest of all summer children. Over time, Kaz stopped hating him for who his jib was cut to be. Venom was still the one who cherished him, touched him gently, asked what HE wanted. For as long as he could keep him, Venom would be Kaz' Boss.

Still it stung when Ocelot pulled his creation's leash. Slave to hypnosis, Venom would crawl to Ocelot's side, even out of Kaz' bed. Ocelot said it was only for training. Ocelot also held the sex over his head as a prize. He would pretend he wasn't sleeping with his doll and was at the same time, constant cognitive dissonance, par for the pussycat's course. Kaz fought back in frustration. Turned out that if he blocked Venom's exit, grabbed his dick out of his pants, crashed to the floor, and sucked it right there, Venom would put off going to Ocelot side so soon after the call. And he would be empty going into "training." Tasted satisfying.

someone tapped lightly on the door. Definitely Ocelot, since the sound was strong but slightly dulled and high on the door frame. Men knocked on the door, women usually rapped lighter, while the rest would hit the frame much lower, and a comfortable arm's length. Only Ocelot was extra enough to knock with such a flourish.

"Is it business?" Kaz asked from his desk. 80% of being a PMC was desk work or muck work. 10% daily routine. Only 10% action.

"It's urgent," answered the annoying Old West accent, "and personal."

Well then Kaz really didn't want to do it.

"We can't talk about this in the open, Miller. It's about Quiet."

Well all right, fine. Kaz heaved himself out of his chair and went to open the door. Only so he could close it hard directly after Ocelot. Only after smelling the hallway air did Kaz realise that his room was a bit rancid. He wasn't going to open the screened and shaded window.

"I won't pretend I don't know any longer," Ocelot said, shooting Kaz with grey eyes. His turning head was attempting to lock their gaze together while Kaz circled him in the room. Miller's aviators admitted no such connection. He got a glass of water from his own room-temperature cooler so he could keep his back to Ocelot longer. He knew it wasn't about Quiet all along. But he was glad they were having this conversation, so he could finally accuse Ocelot outright without the man pretending he was ignorant and innocent.

"You're too much of a coward to hypnotise yourself," Kaz concluded, "or are you going to tell me you're too much of a romantic?"

"I'm not going to those lengths to keep YOUR secret, Miller." Ocelot was walking up behind him. Kaz could see him blurrily in his mind's eye, a smoky figure made of heat.

"My secret?" The floor scraped as Kaz turned around.

"Which strain did you infect him with?" Ocelot asked almost conversationally.

"I'm sorry?"

"We're both too old for this. I don't want to play the game where I pretend you're not a Skull parasite just so I can hold the public revelation as a trump card. It's not worth it now. You've infected the boss, so I need to know with which strain, so I don't get him speaking it and triggering an outbreak."

Kaz removed his sunglasses. His brow darkened. His glazed eyes almost shone in white. So Ocelot really did know it—

"It ain't an eye injury. And ain't early glaucoma. I had to kill a good lab tech to keep your secret for you from the rest of the base, so why don't you return the favour for me? Which strain?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"You don't want him to die, do you? I thought you loved him."

"If I infected him, I'd tell him what language to avoid myself, but I didn't, so you can get the hell out of my office." Kaz stamped his metal appendage forward loudly. Ocelot didn't back down.

"He's changing. His body's putting on weight, too much too fast, and his horn's out of control. And you wonder why he hasn't visited you lately? His personality's changing too. He's moody, stalking around the animal platform in between CQC."

Kaz sneered at Ocelot while returning to his chair.

"Miller, I caught him biting Mofu's neck. You know he adores that sheep."

If that was true, that was actually strange. Ocelot didn't like to actually lie to him though, only omit the truth in large swathes.

"I didn't infect him," Miller said. "Either it happened in the field, or it's Quiet. Should I interrogate her again?"

"Not while I live and breathe." Ocelot huffed once, then stomped back to the door. "Thank you for your candour. I'll ask Quiet, and motivate medical a little more forcefully."

Door opened, door shut, like that the cat was gone. Kaz wondered what was really going on. But he still had paperwork.

Venom really didn't visit him for the rest of the week. He didn't come to the briefings either; used Ocelot as a go between. Kaz tried to go to him, but always he was absent from here someone had just seen him. The only time Miller saw him was out on a catwalk in the middle of a storm. He saw him through a porthole on his way to the bathroom. He was crouched over, but still his horn poked up over the curled form like the last slash of nu ぬ. Something seemed wrong.

Kaz pushed out the bay doors, threw his piss bucket in the sea, and ran over to the catwalk. The route was too circuitous, since the catwalk connected two other platforms from the one he was on. The closer he got, the heavier the rain fell. Venom started to holler, and his dark form throbbed. The bars around him bent. Kaz saw it was his hands trying to hold on to them. Venom's yelps turned to howls. He seemed more like a fungal growth than a man. Then there was a horrible screaming. Kaz had never heard the sound before, something trapped between a tortured animal and a tiny mountain flute, a sort of hellish birdsong coming from the East.

Ocelot walked slowly from the far platform, hanging on carefully to the undamaged railing. The wind and water blew around his body ferociously. The sky, starless, moonless, dark, only lit the scene with lightning and the base's lime floodlights. Power was out. Still, Ocelot's mouth was open, filled with rain and saltwater before he spit. He screamed. Terribly, he screamed.

Venom screamed back. Kaz could hear different types of panicked screaming from buildings behind him, screams about water coming in a breach, and the power going out, and an electrocuted man who had caught lightning. These were distant, soft, nothing like the eerie passion before him. The sound buffeted him, and them. Venom screaming, Ocelot screaming, and Kaz stood still. The two men met on the catwalk. Ocelot threw his arms around Venom. Then Kaz realised that Venom's bellows had vomited mass from his form. He was small again, only the mountain of a man that muscle built. His human form was clinging to Ocelot like the brooch for a windswept cloak. The clap which concealed a disguised one, a bakemono.

Venom seemed better after that. He was even better in the morning, when he opened Miller's door without knocking, and holding a blanket and actual hot cocoa. He had seen Kaz out in the storm, he said, and was sure he'd be soaked to the bone. He didn't want Kaz getting a cold, he said. He wrapped Kaz up with blanket, arms, and love, and kissed him. Kaz kissed him back. He wouldn't ask about the storm if Venom didn't bring it up.

Most of all, Miller hated to admit that maybe Ocelot was performing a useful service, whatever he did out there.

-===-

Oni are a mainstay of Japanese myth. Many foreigners know of the popular oni image: a large horned ogre with coloured skin, clothed in a tiger skin, and holding a large spiked iron club. Some have seen the comical oni of Urusei Yatsura, or heard the heart-warming tale of Red Oni Blue Oni. The Oni are famous for their size, their strength, and their ferocity, which can be channelled for good or for evil. No demons are they, according to some legends, but separate creatures like men, of their own society and their own preoccupations.

Other tales tell of humans who become oni, because to be an oni is the be human who is a demon. These oni grow their horns and metal teeth, and turn more strange-skinned and fearsome as their sins eat them alive. Any excess can spur the rot: greed, jealousy, anger, even heartbreak. While a wild oni can be killed by sword and spear and Shinto chant, the domestic can only be conquered by understanding. Japanese drama runs replete with stories of reluctant warriors infested by the oni spirit. Duty, a caste forced on them at birth, forces them to kill, while that blood feeds the demon which in turn consumes them. Theirs are stories with no happy ending.

-===-

Kaz was reading about cows. More specifically, he was reading about beef and beef alternatives. Even more specifically, he was researching for burgers. It was how he relaxed. He'd had a hard week or two of training dumb kids, making sure equipment was up to snuff, procuring jobs for the dogs, doing the paperwork that Venom hated... and Venom hadn't been around lately to make it better. Over two months since the howling night, and it was raging outside again, the full moon ripped away. Kaz wondered if Venom was in distress again. He picked up the radio, aimed for Venom's frequency. Anyone there?

No one there. Kaz hit up medical. Venom wasn't there either. He tried Ocelot. No one answering. He was about to turn off his set.

"Need something, Miller?" Ocelot was on the line. There was heavy breathing in the background, and metal bumping against metal.

"I'm worried about boss," Kaz said.

"Did you hear it too?"

"Is he howling?"

"Hum, just me, I guess," Ocelot said rather loudly to himself. "No, not howling."

"Is he all right. Do you... do you have him chained up?"

"Yep. It's a fext thing. Normal training, nothing to be worried about."

"A sex thing."

"A FEXT thing. He's an undead creature with certain needs, of the occult ritual nature. But I have things under control."

"Burning candles, drinking blood, chanting, hoods, out of place kris, a pentagram?"

"A five pointed star inscribed within a circle is a Pentacle, Miller."

"Sure. Have fun."

Definitely sex. Kaz turned off the radio. He knew Venom always came back to him. Whatever happened with Ocelot on stormy nights was the fault of hypnosis. He could brood about it, or remember the kind touches that would come the next morning. Learning about the smoky taste of wildebeest distracted him for the next hour.

Circular paw pads and sharp claws skittered over the base's battered floor. Kaz heard them coming closer, and stiffened. It sounded too small to be DD. Soon, it was scratching at the door, and making a godawful noise. Mmruhr. Mrrrrrrrrrrrogh. Mrrrrrrrrogh. It jumped for the door handle. It was getting close to solving the puzzle. Kaz decided to end its struggle. He banged the door handle down with his crutch. A big grey ball of fur shot into the room.

Moon-faced and shaggy, the manul cat crashed into Miller's water cooler. Its purely round pupils were wide in greenish-gold sockets. It rushed to Miller's leg, head-butted it, vocalised over and over alongside bats of big round paws. The manul ran back to the door, mouthed off, then was back at Miller's pant leg. It bit his cuff and started dragging it backward.

After a while, Kaz figured out that first, this wasn't a regular fat cat but a rare and naturally wide cat. Second, the cat wasn't playing or attacking him but acting with a singular intensity to lead him like Lassie. Third, this wasn't normal behaviour for any wild animal, especially not any feline. He immediately suspected Ocelot. The cat wanted him to follow it, it seemed. If Ocelot wanted to toy with him, wouldn't he radio? The manul sat in a lump like a hamburger patty, waiting for some response. Kaz was considering whether to actually follow it, since Ocelot would doubtless be on the other end. Giving up on trying to drag Miller around, the manul began an even more unnatural behaviour via vocalisation:

muh muh muh mrrogh mrrogh mrrogh muh muh muh

muh muh muh mrrogh mrrogh mrrogh muh muh muh

muh muh muh mrrogh mrrogh mrrogh muh muh . . .

That was an S.O.S. in meow.

Kaz sprung out of his chair and clanked over to the door past the manul. The large pallas cat followed him right on his metal heels, then darted in front of him. It ran in front of him, far outpacing him with anxious energy. Miller hustled his buns. If he could trust Ocelot to any extent, to any shred of mutual humanity and decorum, sending a wild cat trained to meow S.O.S. and lead him somewhere had to be something REAL and MEANINGFUL. If it was just a test run, then it was a test run for a system that would be used seriously later, and he wouldn't hold it against the manul's miserable trashcan of a trainer if it turned out to only be a test. He had to believe that all the effort to train this behaviour in a goddamned wild animal was beyond even Ocelot's penchant for elaborate hoaxes.

The manul was leaping down the hallways ahead of Kaz. They passed bemused but not entirely confused soldiers on their run. The base was definitely not a stranger to wild animals running around, especially when the Top Three were involved. Kaz chasing a manul: not the weirdest thing ever. Big Boss had ridden a baby giraffe while hand feeding a pangolin teeny tiny shrimp, and both of the passengers were wearing Santa hats. Kaz and the cat were even running toward the animal platform, so it all added up to trying to corral the kitty back in its proper cage.

Yet Kaz felt growing unease the closer he and the pallas cat got to the edge of the administrative platform. The zoo was this way, but also the abandoned torture rooms dug into concrete and sea rock below, shielding screams with animal bellows and the ever present ear splitting crash of white water. Ocelot's rooms, private bowers of blood, lay below a little hidden hatch that the manul had just jumped into. Its heavy body buffeted the ladder rungs and slid walls on the way down, claws on concrete giving the impression of a controlled descent more than a fall. Instead Kaz had to go down one rung at a time before he could get purchase on the handrail. Then, like a fireman, he fell.

Bellows cut the breakwater in the ocean's bosom. Both his boss and Ocelot screamed, bringing back memories of the last stormy night. Unlike that night, where the salty air carried senseless cries, Miller heard form in the frantic sounds. Pathetic Russian pleas warred with horrible howls and growls shaped around what may once have been words. The manul joined the sound, meowing Kaz on outside its former rhythm. There was only pain and confusion down in the black and red hallway, and an iron door just crooked ajar separated Kaz from its source. The room released a blade of yellow onto the wall beyond the door, where the shadow of a hand reached, again and again.

Ocelot was bloodied, torn, and looked like shit. After toeing open the door another few inches, Kaz couldn't feel anything about it. The sight was too immediate and visceral, so that describing it triggered military training to made the description plain. The room at large was candlelit and festooned in purposeful blood drawings, which smelled pungently but not unpleasantly. A pentacle wreathed in unknown script decorated the floor, while poems in the same arcane angled runes and cluttered block characters splattered the walls. Unartistic dots of fresh red ruined the strange seven-fold symmetry. Animal skeletons lay disarticulate but delicately ordered over their skins. Herbs festooned the merger between any two surfaces, breaking up the angles, or rendering them a smooth curve. The only tables had semi-circular legs melting off of the flat glass top, cloyingly modern. One was set up to tie a man down and inflict pain. Another formed a ritual altar supporting a toppled golden chalice, a standard issue bowie knife, chalcedony geodes holding various offerings, musky and floral incense still alight, and a strangely sided trapezohedral jewel that seemed at once the most colourless black and a bright searing blue that hurt to observe. The last table in the room, the last bit of furniture apart from cushions, had once been used as a desk. The papers and pens on it, and the typewriter, and the ink cartridges, and the caning rod, and the heavy bottle of Orangina, were all thrown to the floor. Ocelot strained over it, reaching right toward the door, while terrible things pulled him back by his legs and the table legs too, all merged together in brown blood and white ribs and slithering pink.

Blinking, unwilling to look too much on it, Kaz tried to force himself to take in more detail in the few seconds he had left of his first impression. The thing behind Ocelot was going to be after him next. He could tell because already exposed muscles were rippling over freshly formed bones, rearing back an arm for him. There, on the floor, the pentacle was broken, and the strange salts around it, those that were effervescing into fœtid air. Kaz wasn't an expert on the occult, but he knew that whatever had caused that puddle, that smear, right there on the design, that had caused all of this. Kaz was an expert on Venom. That body behind Ocelot was still Venom.

Ocelot scrabbled forward, emboldened by seeing Kaz. His abdomen ripped a bit on the table edge, just showing off what little fat he had there over the somewhat woolly tendons. Unspooling, breaking, his skin and everything underneath. Miller finally noticed that his boots were embedded in the wall above an ibex skull by their spurs, with socks spilling out. Ocelot had pretty sharp and thick nails, but they weren't enough to find purchase on the slick floor. His pants were undone. The red around his throat wasn't from his missing scarf, but it matched his gloves. His shirt was just strips, his vest too, and the remnants of his coat tangled his ankles. The arm Kaz had calculated would go for him instead grabbed Ocelot's head by the hair, yanked it back. Ocelot yelled and sobbed. Another arm was on his raw stomach, and dragging him in.

Still Kaz stood in the thrall of Venom's appearance. The man had grown huge. He was breaking apart more, then growing into the empty space. He was made of muscle and mist, before resolving into skin and open bone. Four arms, no, six, and large legs bending where they shouldn't, and large thick black claws like a falcon... larger, ever larger he grew, with his innards twisting behind tendons whenever his skin crumbled and stretched to expand. His horn grew throughout him. It became bone, and skin, and hair, and heart, making itself into flesh which crackled as it pulsated. It was more than shrapnel, and shone with the same impossible light as the irregular jewel on the altar. But it glinted yellow, everywhere the light bounced off of it yellow like a million flames in a prism which painted the room. Venom dripped with light, and darkest glittering silicon flesh, and darting pink tendrils that ached to take form. Above his alien body, his familiar face remained. A massive shattered curve like a fractal crescent moon of black horn burdened the friendly ghost of Big Boss' smile.

"Kaz, please, help!" Ocelot screamed and squirmed in Venom's fourfold grip.

Kaz pulled himself together, best as he could. What the hell was he supposed to do to help in this situation? This was a great time to cut his losses and run. Get to the closest gun closet just so he could lay down fire on the way to the napalm depot because fire was probably the only shit that could kill this. Kill it? Kill Venom?

"How?!" Kaz yelled back entirely unhelpfully. But he didn't run. He was trying to think of a way to get Venom back. This situation was far outside of his experience. He was doing the best he could by not pissing then and there like Huey.

"He's not Big Boss!"

"Well no shit!"

The monstrous Venom sent one hand down to the dark opening of Ocelot's pants. Ocelot thrashed harder, but hands bigger than his head held him in place, while trailing vines of pink mucus lay the initial paths for more muscle and bone to form. The monster was trying to overcome Ocelot as kudzu would conquer the South.

"It wants to have sex with me, Miller!"

"What am I—" Kaz shook his head, and pounded on the floor. "Is it just— did it steal his face? Is it not human?"

"He's not a fext!"

"I CAN SEE. Should I kill it?" Kaz looked around him. Ocelot's holsters were empty. So therefore... behind him at the door, there were two revolvers. Kaz threw his back to the wall by the door, slid down until his butt met floor, then picked up, cocked, and aimed one revolver to kill. His remaining arm trained the muzzle straight at the monster's forehead. If it still had a brain, and if bullets could still harm it...

"No, he's yours!" Ocelot broke through Kaz calculating the shot. Below the Russian's spread legs, something large and fat was growing up. Kaz had a very good idea what it was. It looked sickeningly familiar, just, much larger in scale. Giant talons ripped the crotch out of Ocelot's trousers and boxers. The cowboy was left in thick khaki denim chaps over his long imprisoned legs. And as cowboys are wont to do, he was crying into his ratty moustache. "Please don't..."

"Please don't kill him?"

"I meant him!" Ocelot tried straining his hips away from the solidifying body behind him. He looked over his shoulder through wet, angry eyes. "Don't do this; I don't want it." The monster responded to Ocelot's anger with a kiss. Kaz could see the tongue in it from where he sat. After the beast relented, Ocelot spat out the remnants of anything that had slithered into his mouth. He glared at Kaz. "Shoot him! Shoot the arms, around me. If you hit me, fine."

Violence came easily. Kaz aimed again, then shot. The bullets, six shots, hit the crunchy flesh trapping Ocelot's feet. Kaz slid for the other revolver. On his side, he shot again, around the nubs of red leather that remained of Ocelot's gloves trapped in the monster's pectorals. The monster howled, and its skin rippled.

Ocelot peeled off of it like a scab. The Russian scrabbled on the floor with all his strength, breaking apart flesh that fizzled out to nothing until he could rush to Miller's side. He stopped for a microsecond at the door. Obviously he was thinking of just fleeing. It was a sane reaction. But he dropped to a crouch by Kaz. He dug through his torn coat until he somehow found pockets intact. Bullets came out. He grabbed his revolvers from the floor and Miller's hand, and reloaded.

"He's been doing this with much more frequency, as of late."

Kaz was absolutely not impressed with the alacrity and nonchalance with which Ocelot returned to his usual patter.

"He's been turning into a monster," Kaz stated more than he asked.

"I wouldn't say that. He's always been a man holding demons."

"For God's sake, Ocelot." Neither of them had time. The creature, maybe Venom, was crouching on its knuckles, and stretching its back legs. It looked ready to pounce. And it definitely had a dangerous erection. And Big Boss' face was definitely smiling. This was just a game.

"Miller, I don't know what's going on. It's not Jo- Big Boss."

"Is it. An actual. Demon." Kaz grit out.

"Big Boss is a fext and that's not a fext. He hasn't been responding well to the usual training, and I tried invoking higher numbers in case he needed further warding, but it shouldn't even be necessary for a human creature such as a fext, even a fext possessed for greater power."

"It's a goddamn ONI, Ocelot." Kaz felt that the term applied. It was big, it has weird skin, it had a horn, it had an "iron club" all right. His childhood fears told him that an oni was slowly crawling toward him, with one big blue eye full of hunger.

"Do not call up... I wasn't... he has small bound spirits but... using the people I see, the thoughts I hear, he's not... he's not right..."

"Can you please have a breakdown LATER." Kaz grabbed Ocelot's shoulder and shook it. Then he just pushed the other man into the gap of the door. He had to get them both out. He hated to admit it, but Ocelot having a breakdown was scarier than the friendly faced monstrosity in a room full of corpse parts.

"Sodium Pentothal, Flunitrazepam Benzodiazepine, Scopolamine in solution..."

Kaz finally got it.

"You're freaking out because that's the phantom and not the real Big boss. You are crying on the floor because of your hypnosis bullshit, not because there's an oni coming to rape us. Get up and run!!" Quickly, Miller pushed his crutch into the small corner between hall and doorframe, and used to it to shove himself upright. He lunged over Ocelot's body and toward the rungs of the steep escape hatch.

Ocelot stood up.

"No. Come back here, you yellow legged—"

"Don't you goddamn say varmint!" Kaz yelled while negotiating his way onto the ladder. Hanging off it, body turned half around, he could see Ocelot standing normally though pissed, and the building flesh behind him.

"It's just Venom, Kaz." Arms tipped with claws slid out on either side of Ocelot's legs and between them.

"Just? Just!"

"That's Kazuhira Miller. You like HIM, don't you?" Ocelot was speaking to the obsidian-bearded face behind him. He was pointing right at Kaz. The face was smiling wider, with teeth. Kaz could smell its breath, all Cuban tobacco, and lanolin hand cream, and bad coffee, and caramel suckers, and the musty sea salt of Venom's tongue. "I'll leave y'all to it." Ocelot patted the horn above where it barely brushed the triangle of his nose. He walked toward the escape ladder, hips rolling between his impromptu chaps and ragged coat. His exposed white hairless chest heaved, and he seemed to grow taller and more spry with every step, even while the cold prickled his skin and shrank his exposed dick. Ocelot took a hold of the rungs next to Miller, and climbed. He left Kaz behind, no words, and no compunction.

Kaz dropped off the ladder. His ass hit the floor again. His crutch clattered on echoing concrete. He stared at Venom, yes actually Venom, while his boss reached out a growing arm to him. Flakes of glitter-thin horn shed from the arm, and dusted the floor in strange ash. Kaz felt that hand, then another cradle his back, then bring him forward. His knees slid through the charcoal dark dust. His chest came into open air. His legs unsheathed in the cold. His ascot fell somewhere in the shards of crystalline flesh far away. The muscles and membranes of Venom's body had denuded him, and they faced each other with only a blush to clothe them.

So close, and held without malice, Kaz saw Venom clearly. The face was familiar, and it was smiling happily, in the same way as he always had. Kaz chastised himself internally, and scowled. The smile before him dropped, and a small hand, a normal hand, freshly grown, softly held his cheek.

"No, it's okay," Kaz said. He felt a bit hoarse after all the yelling, but he was sure Venom was accustomed to more than a pinch of gravel in his Adam's apple anyway while he growled through life. "I'm just mad at myself. It's you, right? V?"

"Aaah." Venom tried to speak, but though his mouth opened it wasn't any human strings that vibrated to answer, and no tiny tongue moved to modulate his thoughts. Kaz saw lungs between window shades of flesh and rib which opened. The voice was big, but the same. Like an organ, it filled the room, and with such expert sound it conveyed his emotion.

"Yeah, I know it's you. I understand." Kaz let the arms around him support his body. He held the hand that touched his face, comfort on comfort. "It'd be nice if you could tell me what's happening."

"Ayauuu. Ayagag hagagaaahg, haga." Venom looked contrite. Then he scrunched up his face funnily. And then, he pronounced, helpfully and perfectly, "Ugh."

Kaz tried to chuckle, but could only huffily exhale through a smile. Yeah, he got it. Ugh, indeed, for having such a communication problem. If they'd had some magical spell to transmit their thoughts, maybe they could talk about it properly. Hell, give R&D some time, right? Kaz let go of Venom's human hand, then lay his palm over the penis head that prodded into his loose pant leg.

"This has something to do with it."

Venom nodded. His penis pulsed. He whined.

"I'll help you with it if you do one thing for me." Miller rolled his hand around the glans. It burned under his touch, and felt wondrously taut and smooth. He could probably fit his pinkie finger in the urethral opening too, it was so big, like a 2-liter bottle.

Venom whined with a small dip in the tone as a response, and closed his one good eye over a bitten lip.

"Ocelot's never your first choice, right?"

Venom shook his head.

"You went after him because this hurts."

Venom nodded vigorously and pushed his pelvis up. Kaz smiled and ran his hand down the penis shaft in full. His fingers and thumb couldn't meet around it. It grew veins like roots. It was solid as steel, the blood running through it forging it with fire anew.

Kaz squeezed. "Good boy. I need you to use plenty of..."

Venom didn't let him finish the sound or the thought. Plenty of lube, or spit, or blood would not be provided. His penis pushed up into Kaz' crotch, and slipped over the painful seams with precum that only oozed out more to replace any that the cotton soaked up. No matter how it prodded, the massive member only met cloth instead of flesh. Certain of his aim, since he was hitting the covered anus with each thrust, Venom groaned in frustration. Kaz laughed. He laughed loudly, and truthfully, and ran his hands down the top of Venom's shaft to tease it further. Venom's hands around his body tightened, but not dangerously. The commander huffed at his subordinate's insubordination. They both felt the fire of lust and love growing. Trapped inside of flesh beyond words was the understanding: they were both still there in mind even if their horrible bodies became malformed and forced on them dirty deeds.

Together, with squirming muscles and hungry nails, they divested Kaz of his clothes. Venom shed steam and ash for a million pepper moths. Miller mewled at the feeling of his many hot hands roaming his body and caressing his stumps of all kinds. Nipples, amputations, nose, chin, and cock, each projection rubbed until it grew pink, or rock hard, or both. When Venom breathed, Kaz felt his balls brush into soft alveoli, where the bunched air sacs kissed his tender flesh and smoothed his rough hairs. Then, his body was manoeuvred down on the oni's front, until his hips met strong blue-black thighs and his cock became buried in wet coils beyond plush slices of skin. The cock, that beastly cock, could barely fit between his ass cheeks. The head was well in place. Miller breathed out, an uninhibited noise, his head fell back, and his tongue peeked out.

The great thing pressed in. It was thicker than Kaz had ever experienced before, with a thick sponginess over a steel-hard core. Rushing blood pushed veins up its length, and small pearly bumps of pleasuring cartilage sat strong between them. Venom's foreskin was pushed back fully, and the skin of the shaft moved and picked up the shapes underneath in slick transmission wherever Kaz squeezed down his colon. The parasites strung around his intestines had quickly pulled and ruptured to smooth the entrance of Venom's enormous dick. Kaz was thankful then that he was no mere human, or the indisputable weapon of flesh would have ruined him. The parasites tweaked his tissues and goaded his glands into spreading lax and leaking lubrication as well as hedonistic hormones. Within a minute, Miller felt that heady rush of sex at full force, with no regrets or consequences.

Surely Venom's body felt it too when Kaz got wetter and spread to invite his cock in to the base. He started thrusting, the polite pushes of entry thrown far aside. He somewhat remembered where Kaz had a sweet spot, but from the whorish noises the man was making, he figured chasing it down was unnecessary. He had a dancing fire made of meat sucking his dick in with slick muscles and hilly, shuddering, softly ridged strength. Kaz moved and screamed like a slut, and even agreed with the assessment when dirty words spilled out.

"ん～でけぇ、超デケーちんちん大好、狂ってアヘ顔までその巨大なメタルギアで俺の欠を壊して、あは～ん! 俺のマンコを あっボスあぁ お俺を交わってぞ! オナホールになっちゃう!!"

"You're so goddamn big" started it all, followed by "you're tearing me apart, リサアァァ ahh, your big monster dick, yes, oh yes, it's tearing my slutty ass apart." Then came a million permutations of fornication in every language Kaz knew. "I'm a wet mess for you —hey, touch my nips— oh God yes —I mean pinch them— Oh God Yes, I'm your little whore, Master, so mess up my pussy! Make me your onahole," Kaz insisted. While he attended to each of his partner's oral demands, and each of the body's twitching commands, Venom tried to recall both the spots Miller liked most and whether there was meaning behind the madness of his chosen vocabulary. It didn't sound like English porn, quite. But Kaz was so happy that Venom didn't care. He wasn't making great conversation anyway. All he could manage through the thick haze that trapped his words were grunts and growling shouts.

God is everywhere, and so Venom's flesh as well, the body humped over and around and in Kaz. Smelling of blood and iron, oil and broken lamplight, salt and the sighs of dying men, Venom made love to the man who gave everything for him, and then that night gave more. To own and fill this body became his only goal. With beastly abandon, he thrust deeper and harder. He couldn't imagine a more heavenly partner to put through the hell of his heat.

Yes, he realised that was what this was. His heat, his mating desire, which he'd put off for so long and which Ocelot could never fulfil. He remembered tending to Miller's body, where aching bones and intestines came to his home. When his lover's lungs melted and his heart stuttered, he'd sewn him together in sinew and blood and love. And who had Miller loved, and longed for with listless eyes staring out of the med bay windows? Big Boss. But now... wasn't he Big Boss? Yes, and he had always been loved.

Why hadn't he given in to his heat before? His oyaji's tobacco, he hadn't had it in forever. No matter how many cigars he smoked, and he smoked more and more to put off the churning itch in his groin and gums, they weren't the kind stuffed with herbs from Mount Misenoinzan. That blue wormwood in his veins was too thin, so the blue blood itself stained his skin. The blue oni said to the red oni, "I will become a monster so that the villagers will love you." But, Venom had always wondered, who will love the blue oni? When the red oni was so far away, playing with the tiger, the blue oni was only left to ponder if the two had ever been friends, and if this sacrifice had ever been his idea. 

"Boss, you're the best, the best at everything, you have the best, the best ball sack..." Kaz was still singing Venom's praises while he rode the cock that impaled him. Venom could see its outline embossed through sweaty skin. The shaft shoved away intestines and tight tendons, ramming in deep past the navel, and still Kaz tightened and shuddered and leaked onto Venom's stomach. Actively, he turned his own body over the blood filled stake that stretched him, and he angled his body into Venom's hands and over his thighs to drive all that he could touch to madness. Kaz sucked on Venom's ears, then his nipple. He clawed at his partner's ribs and buttocks. His eyes shone bright and white amid black. He scintillated with parasites, scrawling patterns under his flesh and worming in rainbow roads into Venom's veins where the oni's blood burned them to more crystalline ash. A billion colours of black surrounded them, the onyx prism of horn scattering technicolour darkness into the unseen eyes buried by bone.

Just as Kaz was certain that Venom was about to reach his limit, when their breaths mingled too close and thick to be anything but sex distilled liqueur, he broke under the pressure. Finding no outlet for the storm of lust inside him, he bit down on Venom's hand. He held the gigantic hand there with his remaining arm and leg, both thrown over Venom's forearm. The smallest finger on Venom's hand stretched his lips, and Kaz whimpered into their connection. His buttocks bumped into Venom's enormous balls on the downswing of every inhumanly wet screw that bled black precum and parasites. An oil slick oozed out of Miller, a hammer struck the limits of his abdomen, some hard nubby detail of that demon's cock tightly caught his entire prostrate between engorged flesh that had nowhere else to go. Kaz screamed into dry orgasm.

Pain flashed into the white pleasure that assaulted Kaz, then screwed all of his feelings tighter into a tornado that disappeared into the sky of his consciousness. He came to, still filled, and his mouth was too tired to properly smile. Venom's hair was at the side of his unshaven cheek. Venom's teeth were deep in his shoulder. The tusks were long, and pointed, four of them curving into Miller's muscle while the incisors cut at his skin. Kaz felt himself shudder and see pure pleasured white again. All the time, Venom pushed into him, their copulation unending. Four hands, two at his ribs, two at his hips, held Kaz so tight and tender. Then the pain bloomed beautifully throughout his entire body, caught and confused in the flood of fading orgasm.

Venom had stilled, finally, and then his shaft had grown. Kaz could not have believed that it was capable of being any bigger, or that his body could have taken it. Even the parasites were surprised while they struggled to make human cells accommodate even more. Everything had to melt aside up to the hips, or it felt that way, all for a thick entry into a man's sparse hip space. Kaz felt nothing but pressure. He was too far gone in a unique mixture of dopamine and shock.

It felt good. He was full of Venom, all of him, they were one being. He was Venom's appendage, an organ fit to his penis so perfectly that they could merge. Kaz could let go of the last of his humanity and be the end of Venom's sexual urges forever. The parasites agreed. They thrilled to merge their selves with the stronger being that rebuffed them. Inside this cyclone of abandon, the dark rain poured. It was spurts at first, then a trickle, then the sluice. The flood violated Kaz.

As his semen filled up Kaz' intestines, Venom's head swelled with pride. He could see his partner bloat under him, and hear the beautiful mewls that came nonstop. Miller's stomach was so big now, all full of what would have challenged another oni to take. Venom never cared for that. He didn't want to be with an equal. He wanted to be with Kaz who was so much smaller than him, and yet so much, uncontainably greater. Kaz went beyond Venom's desire and ate him up in turn. The litres inside Venom's partner came nowhere close to the ocean of self that Miller had already given him. Venom felt like a piece of Kaz, an arm for him to use, and a slave to his mate's unquenchable thirst. Mate? Well, yes, that sounded nice. That sounded right. A mate, when two pieces fit together perfectly to become one.

They kissed. Under the bow of Venom's back, iron wire over the dark wine sea, they shared their unspoken love. The most carnal of connections felt holy. Monster to monster, they had found Eden in Hell.

Human light returned to Venom's eye. His hair softened, and his skin shed the last of blue and black curling off like paint. Sizzling as mist, and dripping as blood, his arms merged, and his bones reformed, and his body disappeared back into the dark void within him that held it all. His horn pressed back into his babirusa brain. His phallus regained generous human proportion. Black semen rushed out after it and splattered onto their feet.

The two men stood on the befouled ground. Kaz squirmed back into shape, the same unkempt middle aged man with a tightly coiled core he'd been for a while now. Venom stood taller than him, and this too was normal. But only by a few inches. As the high of sex left them, their demons settled back into the human disease that they'd contracted.

Venom bent to the ground. He returned upright with Kaz' aviators. He was smiling softly, with the unending mercy he always exuded to wrap his sadness. Miller managed to smile back.

"Hey, thanks," Kaz said through his shot voice. The glasses changed hands.

"You're not Kaz without them," Venom said.

"I'm not, huh?" Kaz tried to look at his fingers behind the dark glass. In the hallway that sat under storm, night, sea, and concrete, everything but the glint of yellow from the ritual blood room beyond seemed colourless and invisible. Except Venom, who shone in the gloom, and didn't seem to know what to say. "What am I without them? Just Miller? Nobody?" Kaz recalled that he really only took off his aviators for long periods around Venom, when they were screwing, like this. "Your sex toy?"

Venom reached out for Kaz' chin, but touched the man's hand instead, over the bony back strained by years of war. Venom's fingertips were calloused, some cuticles cut up, and the nails bitten. When his human hand was this close, Kaz could smell his cigars. The red metal was still supporting his hip. They were kind of funny together, being so broken, and...

"You're my mate," Venom promised.

While they held each other, Kaz cried.

-===-

Upon examination of the oni's mating behaviour, and comparison with HR records, they seem to be monogamous. The reaction of Miller's parasites to the oni phallus, especially their relaxant and reorganizational effects on the inguinal region, point to possible bio-therapy avenues in parasite research. C-section alternative? Parasite induced tourniquet or arterial ligation? Larger bodily mutations for impersonation and infiltration? Somehow coax Miller's parasites not to die in-vitro. I know he has them commit suicide on purpose, but still. Oni's bodily restructuring, mutation, and regenerative abilities remain on par with that of the fext, except during the heat. This heat, a sort of mating frenzy, increases the oni's uncanniness, and so all of his powers intensify. It was folly to try to bind him with Umr-at-Tawil. That's horrendously clear in hindsight. However, being based on his base sexual drive, they deny him his inhibitions, vocal capacity, and his right mind in general. Further research is absolutely necessary to see if this uncanny expansion can be triggered outside of mating rituals. Gene therapy? Maybe just make him a bit horny. Convince Miller to dress nice. Must shave him.

"Yeah, not on your life," Miller said from Ocelot's doorway.

Ocelot did not shut off the tape recorder. "A clean face would look good on you."

"I know, but I won't do it for you. If Boss wants it, sure."

Ocelot pointed with his thumb over to his bed. A large man was asleep there. AH.

"If MY Boss wants it, sure," Kaz clarified. He stared at Big Boss' sleeping body for a while. Ocelot turned off the tape recorder, then took out a compact mirror and tiny scissors to trim his own ridiculous moustache as some sort of statement. "Are you done pretending Venom is actually Big Boss now? Because that'd be a big load off my balls."

"Not until Venom finds out," Ocelot said unhelpfully. He flicked his scissors in Big boss' direction. "When he leaves, I'll restore the hypnosis with a few instructions to let you take care of Venom's heat."

"How long has he been here?"

"Just tonight. I asked him to visit on the next new moon. When the hypnosis broke, I had a hunch. I need to brief him on the oni situation. I can trust you to be his brother's keeper?"

"If you mean screw him until he's normal again—"

"You performed the kisou tonight already, correct?"

"Kisou..."

"It's Japanese, Kazuhira," Ocelot said, proud of himself.

"Your accent sucks."

"It is the meaning which enlightens us, Miller. The kisou, the binding of demons: that's what I'll call it when you, how'd you put it, screw him until he's normal again. Which I assume, based on the smell, and whatever you tracked into my room, you performed again this month."

"Last week too," Kaz said, looking down only a bit conscientiously at the oily steps dragged behind his heels. "And I'm telling you just so we have it on record."

"I'll turn the tape back on."

"Also, one day you'll owe me. You'll owe me just one thing."

"Not your life, Miller."

"Yeah, not my life. Maybe a burger."

"And here I thought you made the burgers."

"A beer, then. A whole case of beer. Something big enough to say, hey, I'm grateful you saved me from a monster cock even though I'm a neon flamboyant super twink who loves big thick cocks but this one was tooo big for me, so thank you, Kazuhira Miller."

"I could have taken his cock." Ocelot put away his tiny moustache trimmers, unfazed by the unflattering blackmail.

"You're so full of shit."

"And you're full of demon cum, so I reckon that makes us equal."

"Look you owe me, that's all. Owe me for taking Venom when you want Big Boss, and that's all you ever want. So I saved your lovesick ass from your own stupid mind games. Your devotion's a joke, Ocelot. Do you ever think about how he just relies on you, for politics, for sex, for making Venom, for putting together anything he wants in his military pipe dream? Maybe he gives you an orgasm, and that's all you get for years at a time."

"You waited for nine years too."

"And now I gave up. Thanks for the body double. He's a lot better than that bastard in your bed."

"That's your problem, Miller. You'll never understand love."

"Oh give me a break."

"I owe you. That's decided." Ocelot closed his desk drawer along with the thought. "I'll pay you back. I really do keep my promises, you know."

"I'll trust you this once."

Kaz turned his back on the two fools in Ocelot's room. He couldn't stand to look at Big Boss sleeping with a look of undeserving innocence any longer. Venom was waiting for him. Back in the commander's room, they'd make love as humans and Kaz would forget about the man who'd betrayed his heart. His uneven steps clashed on the grey floor. A little more black trickled down his leg. He wanted more. He loved V. V loved him. He couldn't wait to be envenomed.


End file.
